I could eat breakfast any hour of the day.

Refitted for the next 100 years by a duo of prizewinning architects, the 40-year-old Brasserie in the Seagram Building reawakens next week from a deep slumber. In its golden decades, it drew guys and dolls and ink-stained wretches as the only all-night sanctuary in midtown. Its 24-hour vigil will be trimmed now to a mere 16, and the menu will be a tad less slavishly Alsatian, but breakfast items will be available till 1 a.m.

Breakfast stretches until 4 p.m. at Kitchenette, including the lumberjack special (eggs, bacon, and two pancakes) or my favorite, two eggs, bacon, and cheese on marvelous homemade biscuits. Breakfast at Norma's in the Parker Meridien (weekdays from 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 7 a.m.) is an extreme sport: banana-macadamia-nut flapjacks, lemon-ricotta griddle cakes, smoked-trout corn cakes, duck-confit hash with a fried egg on top, even seared foie gras with mango compote in a port sauce. I do my business breakfasts at the Fairway Café with chorizo-and-pepper-tossed scrambled eggs or delicate pancakes and a superior muffin.

I want to shop till I drop and then eat.

When I've been cruising for a frock too long, fish-and-chips is the last thing on my mind. I'm more likely craving fen-phen. But when I pretend to be Uma Thurman, slithering down the dark stairway to meet someone else's husband for lunch, the cool, airy, semi-subterranean Nicole's can be pleasantly erotic. There are ambiguous creatures of every possible gender, stylishly zippered, mostly in black, to turn us both on, not to mention the white-bean-and-spinach soup with a swirl of crème fraîche, and a perky green salad with slivers of raw fennel. Fish-and-chips turns out to be monkfish in a thick crumb girdle, a few fat fries, and peas. Most of the latter are inexplicably smashed. An English fetish, I suppose.

Lunch at the help-yourself cafeteria in Eli's Manhattan, his new Third Avenue emporium, is more my dress-down style. Root vegetables give a subtle sweetness to the chicken soup, but I don't understand why the counterman shattered my matzo ball. I like to do my own shattering. Inside the glass case are all sorts of plump sandwiches on beautiful breads. What torturous riches. Egg salad on pumpernickel. Tuna in a baguette. Meat loaf in an onion brioche pocket. Brisket with Dijon mayonnaise on rye.

I've almost given up on Chinatown.

My problem, exactly. I can say pea sprouts in Mandarin, but not even that helps. I send friends to New York Noodle Town and Ping's Seafood (though I worry it won't be as reliable as it was before chef Chuen Ping Hui took his act to Flushing). Both the Golden Unicorn and Triple Eight Palace were fun and cheap and bustling at recent dim sum lunches, but the dumplings, turnip cake, and deep-fried odds and ends did not make the earth move. Then an old China hand sends me racing to Grand Sichuan International in Chelsea, tingling with great expectations. The tingle escalates, as it will under Sichuan-pepper attack. My pals are game to taste fiery beef tendon, the ox tongue with tripe in hot pepper sauce, torrid "wonder" chicken with fresh bean sprouts, and the braised beef fillets till our tongues are numb. Not bad at all.

What's new in the neighborhood that rates a visit (but maybe not a major detour)?

Do we agree? Brass rails and a few square feet of abused mirror doth not a Balthazar make. But if you're stuck on 57th Street, theme-park row, Marc Packer's new Rue 57 is desperately needed. Sam Hazen, a solid veteran whose food I loved at Cascabel, turns out sensational beefsteak-tomato salad with charred onions and Gorgonzola, a fabulous burger on chibatta with excellent fries, and a $22 pepper steak my mate, the red-meat maven, pronounces "better than Balthazar's."

Celebrate your winning bid on that precious Picasso at Christie's in Rockefeller Center with great wine and cheese or a sophisticated supper at the Morrell Wine Bar & Café, directly across from the skating rink. Gravad lax is luscious, served warm in a thick cut with celery root and crème fraîche. Follow "tartar times three" (scallops, salmon, and tuna) with rich gnocchi in sun-dried-tomato pesto.

The Red Cat is the American bistro at its best, cozy and laid-back with an eclectic crowd and mostly splendid food at sane prices on a constantly changing menu, a prize for Chelsea. But it's worth a detour too. Chef Philippe Roussel's lively herb greenery and lush Provençal revivals make Park Bistro feel new again. Slip into a booth at Jack's Fifth, across from the Plaza, and taste the sparkling cooking of chef Herb Wilson.

Philippe Féret juggles a duo of new brasseries with near duplicate menus -- Brasserie Julien on the Upper East Side and Acacia, not far from Bloomingdale's. I love his ancien classics: intense fish soup with spicy rouille, the frisée salad with bacon lardons, the cassoulet, the choucroute, the giant braised lamb shank, the buffalo short ribs, and sensational buffalo tartare.

Not new at all but new to me, C3, hidden in the Washington Square Hotel, has been trying to get my attention for years. Then a fussy-eater pal had dinner there and left a message on my v-mail hailing it as "a find for the neighborhood." I agree. Especially that $27.50 prix fixe. Though not everything is as good as the peppery grilled Thai shrimp, the garlicky (and overdressed) Caesar, the barely seared tuna with arugula-basil-spiced quinoa, and the buckwheat linguine. Our waitress, young and exotic in a way that would have delighted Gauguin, is quick with misinformation and slow with the order, but we're won by her cheerful enthusiasm.

I'll need romance more than ever in the new century.

Sitting on top of the world in Wild Blue sipping a rare wine and eating Michael Lomonaco's almost old-fashioned American cooking is romance enough for me. Eating in the lounge at Daniel feels sexy, especially if you have great legs that don't quite tuck under the table. I hear Leonardo DiCaprio was seen kissing Amber Valletta in Il Cantinori's rustic, votive-lit back room. A table for two in the corner at Cello will do till it's balmy enough for the garden.

Is pizza too old-hat for you?

Would I give up emeralds just because I discovered rubies? If I didn't have Spazzia with its unbeatable grilled pizzas a few blocks from my door, I'd be trucking down to TriBeCa to get the original at its sibling Spartina. Not that I ever complain about the taxi fare, tightwad that I am, since Stephen Kalt's rustic Mediterranean riffs touch my gourmand soul. The best old-fashioned New York-style pizzas -- fresh mozzarella, San Marzano tomatoes, thin crust slightly black on the bottom -- emerge from the antique coal oven at Lombardi's in Little Italy.

When I listen to my body, it says, eat meat.

Backlash, perversity, cholesterol denial, the latest diet credo . . . whatever it is, my friends are eating meat again. My mate, the Road Food Warrior, never stopped. We agree that the best steak we ate all year was the thick, juicy fiorentina consulting chef Jonathan Waxman sliced on a wooden board at our table in ABC Carpet & Home's Colina. But all the meats off the grill and rotisserie were extraordinary: suckling pig, baby lamb, even turkey breast, so juicy from brining we couldn't guess what it was. At Beacon, chef-owner Waldy Malouf is grilling and oven-roasting salads, herbs, even fruit, but most temptingly meat, glorious meat: splendid T-bone, luscious spit-roasted duck, crusty cured pork chop, and suckling pig.

We had a handsome sirloin at the Palm West, and an equally thoroughbred steak with the unique aged taste that is the signature of Sparks Steak House. (Alas, it was impossible to eat just a little of the crunchy hashed browns.) I shared a fine hunk of cow with a wary Weight Watchers graduate at Angelo and Maxie's, an astonishing one-pounder on the $19.98 lunch. I'd be happy anytime with the double porterhouse at Morton's of Chicago as long as I don't have to hear the waiters' silly show-and-tell where they hold up each broccoli sprig and cellophane-wrapped hunk of raw flesh. And I'm pleased my editor ordered a sirloin at Maloney & Porcelli so I got a taste. I never order it because I'm hopelessly addicted to the crispy pork shank.

This past year, I've been sending friends in search of great steak (especially pals from overseas) to Michael Jordan's Steak House because the meat is first-rate and the bird's-eye view of the newly beautified Grand Central Station gives me shivers of New York pride. Chef David Walzog has exported his new skill on the grill back to his sister ship, Tapika, now billed as a cowboy steak house, i.e., with a southwestern cant. We loved the New York strip, the spicy venison, and the green-chile corn fries.

Raging carnivores always thank me for pointing them toward Churrascaria Plataforma. Start with an icy caipirinha, but don't go berserk at the buffet if you hope to do justice to this Brazilian madness. At your signal, a waltz of waiters begins, toting pork, sausage, lamb, and a dozen different cuts of beef, all on skewers, slicing away at your command. It's a floor show that keeps even the kiddies amused.